Permission was, of course, granted, and the professor walked away with that bit of rock which scores of men had kicked against at the door. Taking it to his laboratory, the scientist carefully analysed it. He found it to be a sample of the richest phosphate in the world. The original owners had bought the island as a business proposition, but they failed to realize the fortune that was theirs. That rocky island turned out to be one mass of phosphate, worth about £100,000,000--and they had let it go for a few hundreds! Of all who had stumbled over that lucky door-prop, the professor was the only one who had the sense to see the fortune lying at his feet. The counterpart of the professor who saw a fortune in that neglected lump of rock was the diver who heard the whisper of truth in a rumour. The work of this diver took him to the coast of Galway, where he was engaged on salvage work that was to last some little time. He was a companionable sort of man and, after finishing his spells of work, would adjourn to the tap-room of the village inn to spend his evenings in yarning with the fisherfolk. For years a story had been current in the neighbourhood that a Spanish galleon, one of the ships of the Armada, had gone down in the vicinity. Those who heard the yarn smiled. “It’s just a rumour,” they remarked. Whether it was merely a rumour, or something more, the story had been told from father to son for generations. So persistent a rumour was it that it survived century after century, living in the traditions of these simple Irish fisherfolk, passed on by word of mouth in the little community, until it survived to our own times. Most of the fishermen knew the yarn of the sunken Spanish galleon, but perhaps the passage of time had made many of them rather sceptical. Anyway, one evening the diver was enjoying his pipe and his beer and talking about his work, when an old fisherman said to him: “Why don’t ye thry for the galleon?” “What galleon?” the diver inquired. “Why, yon one wrecked just outside the bar,” the fisherman answered. “Ye can walk about the seabed in that suit of yours?” “I do it every day,” the diver replied. “Well, why don’t ye walk out and get the treasure?” The diver smiled. “Show me the treasure, and I’ll soon get it,” he said. “Where is it?” Solemnly the fisherman looked at the diver. “My father, he told me, and his grandfather, he told him. A mighty ship from Spain it was, full of treasure, that went down in a storm. They saw it from the shore here.” Puffing away at his pipe, the diver considered the matter. The story in his judgment might easily be true. “Show me the spot, and we’ll share the treasure, if there is any,” he said. “All right,” the old fisherman agreed. “She’s there all right. Sometimes we catch our gear in her.”